Daniel P. Whitmire is a former astrophysicist and professor of mathematics at Arkansas University, and he recently published an article in the International Journal of Astrobiology. According to his conclusions, mankind will disappear in 100-500 years.
The article depicts the idea that millions of years of technological evolution are extremely rare. Humanity is right now in this very situation. However, if we are to believe Whitmire’s theory, Homo sapiens have just entered the technological era, because the conquest of space and the nuclear energy have only occurred over the past 100 years. According to his claims, the principle of mediocrity suggests that the alternate occurrence of more civilizations on the same planet is unlikely. That means that at the end of its existence, the Earth’s biosphere will most likely be uninhabited.
“According to the Principle of Mediocrity, a cornerstone of modern cosmology, in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, we should believe that we are a typical member of an appropriately chosen reference class. If we assume that this principle applies to the reference class of all extant technological species, then it follows that other technological species will, like us, typically find that they are both the first such species to evolve on their planet and also that they are early in their potential technological evolution. Here we argue that this suggests that the typical technological species becomes extinct soon after attaining a modern technology and that this event results in the extinction of the planet’s global biosphere.”
Daniel Whitmire has made a graph with which he calculated how much mankind has to live if we follow the current path. According to it, Earth’s civilization will last for about 100 years, and if the standard deviation and chart asymmetry are taken into account, this index can grow up to 500 years.
If you think that the idea is far fetched, you should know that we have already seen similar estimations made by Professor Frank Fenner or Stephen Hawking.
Oh, and there’s also Planet X that we should be worried about!
